Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 89, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 July 1899 — About Street Fairs. [ARTICLE]

About Street Fairs.

Charley Landis Makes Some Remarks About Them, Right From the Shoulder. For the benefit of certain of our citizens who have talked at times in favor of a street fair in Rensselaer of the “wide open” kind, such as the generality of them are, and such as The Republican has already spoken out against, we commend the following from the “Man -on - the - Corner” Charley Landis, of the Delphi Journal: I think it is time that some one in Indiana registered a protest along the street fair line. I cannot understand why there has not been an uprising all over the state. It is a plain statement of simple fact to say that the street fairs of Indiana, as a general rule, have been nothing more or less than notoriously vile affairs. They have been made an opportunity for exhibitions that ordinarily would be tolerated nowhere outside the most depraved sections of Paris. They have been scandals. As a matter of fact in one week’s time they have done far more for immorality, lawlessness and crime than nil the churches and missionary societies in the communities blasted by their presence could counteract in an entire year. The city authorities who will ' give unbridled license to exhibitions such as have caused the blush of shame to mantle the cheeks of good people in many localities would receive but their just deserts were they kicked out of public office. It seems strange that outraged morality has not, in some of the towns, organized and moved upon these bold, wicked, temporarily erected dens of infamy with stones and rotten eggs and everything else that would hurt and be offensive. Such action would be amply justified. What excuse can any set of men give for polluting for an entire week the atmosphere of any neighborhood with the low and degraded offal of Chicago’s .worst dives, bringing to the very door of our homes unblushing immorality, shameless sin, the coarse jest of the abandoned and the wild orgy of the besotted and fallen? And yet the men who .manage these conberns are usually men whom we regard as “leading citizens.” Their excuse is that they desire a “week’s good business.” Shame on such an excuse. Money made by such attractions is blood money. Such money is made at the expense of home, at the expense of good citizenship, at the expense of virtue and morality. The street fairs in this state last year were unclean. They poisoned the atmosphere And the good people living in the various communities in which street fairs will be held this year should organize and demand that there be no systematic catering to the lowest and basest passions which for a time, at least, make bright particular stars of criminals and outcasts